iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

www.twitch.tv/mccanary rundown 1 is baby mode, we got it (Playing GTFO live with friends) #MCCanary #doodle #livenow #vtuber #GTFO

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

While I knew of Shunosaurus, I never knew how extensive and complete its fossil record was. And it isn’t even a bog standard sauropod. It makes me happy knowing one of our most complete dinosaurs is also one of the strangest looking ones.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Since then, enough fossil remains of this dinosaur have been found that 94% of skeletal remains have been accounted for, making it one of the most complete dinosaur fossils on record. Which frankly was a surprise for me.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Initially, a single partial skeleton was discovered, that was until 1 year later, 20 more specimens were discovered, including multiple complete skeletons.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Shunosaurus was a mid to late Jurassic Sauropod from China with a relatively short neck, a curiously knobby tail, and personally a bizarrely shaped head, face, and mouth. It was discovered in 1977 by a group of students practicing paleontology excavating along a road bank at Dashanpu in China.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

and my inktober for today, Shunosaurus and I can report I will go back to my normal, fine tip felt pen :V #MCCanary #inktober2026 #illustration #paleoart #dinosaur

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Either way, Alvarezsaurus and its cousins will always mark a personal favorite of mine, given their bizarre hands and relation to dinosaurs and birds.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

At the very least, this group did diverge from early Aves in the Jurassic, matching up with when the very first avian features began appearing in dinosaurs.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

What's strangest still is this particular group of dinosaurs is the most separate from all the bird-like dinosaurs and true aves, making them either the most bird-like non avian dinosaurs, or the least dinosaur-like, bird-like dinosaurs.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Which partially makes sense, especially as flower plants began to appear, with insects like ants and bees evolving alongside flowering plants.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

This finger is probably the most distinct feature on Alvarezsaurus, so much so that it appears in alvarezsaurs up until the end of the Cretaceous, seemingly leading this group of dinosaurs to primarily be diggers and insectivores.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Alvarezsaurus is the small bird-like theropod from Late Cretaceous Argentina with a long body, long legs, and short arms that support a large, single claw on the first finger.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

here's yesterdays inktober btw, Alvarezsaurus did kinda have to give up halfway on this one cuz I was trying a dip pen and learned the ink I was using, was not dip pen ink :V #MCCanary #inktober2026 #illustrration #dinosaur #paleoart

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

www.twitch.tv/mccanary let's draw some spooky stuff, why not (Playing Gartic Phone live with friends) #MCCanary #garticphone #doodle #livenow #vtuber

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Frankly, I like the name, which was coined for Isabel Valdivia Berry who initially discovered the specimen. It’s just a pleasant name for a dinosaur. It also just so happens to share the first 3 letters of my own name. I'm not biased :V

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

While I think it is often considered that most dinosaurs divide between “plant eaters” and “meat eaters”, omnivores are more common in nature than you may expect. So finding definitive evidence of such is really cool, especially amongst dinosaurs.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Which is lucky as the most unusual part of this dinosaur appears to be its skull and teeth. For starters the skull is fairly boxy and long, almost as tall as it is wide, and teeth of this dinosaur are heterodontic, with two different shapes in teeth possibly suggesting a more omnivorous diet.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Isaberrysaura is a genus of stegosaur from the mid Jurassic that lived in what is now Argentina and may have the cutest name for a dinosaur I”ve ever heard of. The only specimen currently known consists of a nearly complete skull, some vertebrae, and other various incomplete remains.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I do have an inktober, it's a stegosaur named Isaberrysaura which is just a really cute name for a dinosaur :V #MCCanary #inktober2026 #illustration #paleoart #dinosaur

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

www.twitch.tv/mccanary we got the stink wizard this time! (Playing Warhammer 40k: Darktide live with friends) #MCCanary #doodle #livenow #vtuber #Darktide

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

we're also running a poll on which game to run for the rest of spooky season, get on the discord if you wanna see us play OFF or LISA! discord.gg/E8gQqfa22U

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

and a bonus pic since we did end up switching to OFF thanks for joining everyone! vod available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRAx... #MCCanary #doodle #OFF #vod #stream

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

For me, I find the combination of a tyrannosaur with long grasping limbs fairly unique, and when looking at it when a lot of people think of a vicious dinosaur, Dryptosaurus really fits that description.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

It was then renamed by Marsh, yet in all of his expected stubbornness, Cope continued to use Laelaps despite his mistake. Which frankly is pretty standard regarding anything involving Cope and Marsh.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

However, it wasn't always called Dryptosaurus. Originally it was named Laelaps aquilunguis by Cope as a reference to a dog from Greek mythology. And it would have kept that name, had this designation not already been taken by a mite.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Dryptosaurus was a medium sized tyrannosaur from the Late Cretaceous that distinguished itself from other tyrannosaurs given its particularly long arms.Found in the North East US, it is known primarily from a single partial skeleton.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

my inktober for today is Dryptosaurus and boy I feel like I'm really chunking through this october #MCCanary #inktober2026 #illustration #dinosaur #paleoart

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

To which everyone should go support that museum if you can. I do believe it is still at risk of being lost, and I do hope we are able to prevent its closure. There truly is nowhere in the US like it.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The remains were then reconstructed into the first skeletal reproduction of any dinosaur in North America, and was set on display at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, the oldest museum in North America.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Once the fossil material had been found, it was studied and described by paleontologist Joseph Leidy, who recognized that the fossils were dinosaur bones due to their similarities to Iguanodon.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

20 years later, a visitor named Wiliam Parker Foulke took interest in John's fossil, and proceeded to uncover the rest of the remains where John had originally found his trophy fossils.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Apparently upon discovering some large bones, John decided to do what anyone would do and put them on display in his house.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It was originally found by John Estaugh Hopkins in 1838, who was digging in a marl pit which is just a semi fine earthy bed consisting of loose carbonate rich clays and silts, something I have not heard of until now.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Hadrosaurus was a large mid Cretaceous hadrosaur and is well regarded as one of the very first dinosaurs ever documented in North America.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I got my inktober ready just running a little behind is just Hadrosaurus, the default dinosaurs #MCCanary #inktober2026 #illustration #paleoart #dinosaur

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It is always unfortunate knowing that a lot of dinosaur study material was lost during WWII, but it is still good to know that paleontologists have been able to recover and continue studying fossils like Massospondylus.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Still, the type specimen is still considered valid and attributed to Owen, and since then more fossils as well as an additional species has been discovered and described in 2009 by Paul Barret.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Bombings of England between May 10-11 resulted in the destruction of the original material, with only original illustration, documentation, and plaster casts remaining.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

And it would be some of the oldest known dinosaur material we have preserved, except unfortunately the entirety of the original specimens along with at least 2 other dinosaur and over 500 other specimens were destroyed during World War II.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Massospondylus was an early Jurassic prosauropod/sauropodomorph initially discovered in South Africa by Richard Owen in 1854, making it one of the first dinosaurs ever named and described.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

inktober for the day is Massospondylus and I guess I'm addicted to plants now . _. #MCCanary #inktober2026 #illustration #paleoart #dinosaur

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

This got so bad that apparently one such palentologist described Dilophosaurus as the "best worst-known dinosaur". Which I think is fitting, just given how such an iconic dinosaur is so well known for everything but what the dinosaur actually is.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

But apparently this dinosaur has undergone several revisions, even originally lacking crests entirely due to poor preservation and misunderstanding of their head anatomy. Since then, there have been mistaken studies attributed to confusing plaster casting as original material.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The holotype specimen was found in 1940 by Jesse Williams who brought a party of paleontologists lead by Charles L. Camp to recover three original skeletons. And you would think for being such an old specimen that it would have been well studied.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Dilophosaurus was an early Jurassic theropod from North America well know for its double crested head. What is less well known is that it was large, growing over 20 ft long, and 8 ft tall, making it one of the earliest known carnivorous macrofauna of the dinosaurs.

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

inktober for today is dilophosaurus not brought on by any kind of other inspiration 👀 #MCCanary #inktober2026 #illustration #paleoart #dinosaur

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

yeah, this was pretty much done lol wish me luck, this is for a juried gallery show #MCCanary #illustration #paleoart #landscape #charcoal

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

www.twitch.tv/mccanary they just keep giving us new good toys (Playing HELLDIVERS 2 live with friends) #MCCanary #vtuber #twitch #livenow #HELLDIVERS2

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MCCanary (Comms Available) @mccanary.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

gotta put one more day into this but honestly, I thought this would have taken me longer :V #MCCanary #paleoart #landscape #charcoal #workinprogress

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